Sondrel

UK

Sondrel is a UK headquartered IC Design Consultancy, with engineering teams located in 5 ISO27001 compliant design centers across Europe and Asia. As one of the world’s leading independent design consultancies, we deliver on cost, performance and reliability of delivery for our clients. With a multi-skilled global engineering team that can work onsite or in our strategically located design centers we provide our clients with greater flexibility and control of their budgets to reduce fixed costs.

From spec to silicon, and in specific market sectors, including automotive, IoT, mobile and communications, we are continuously investing in our design capabilities and introducing new areas of consultancy as the semiconductor market itself evolves and changes.

Services

IC Design Services – Spec to Silicon

Sondrel engineering capability covers verification, DfT, physical design and mixed-signal/analog design engineering. Combined, these skills can deliver complex SoC projects such as networking chips > 600mmsq, or be used for rapid delivery of a small IoT device where particular skills in low power or analog design may be needed.

Sondrel’s consulting in the area of design verification can take the form of a bundle of “Shift Left” tools and methodology to reduce manpower requirements on complex designs, or the hiring of a team of functional verification engineers to supplement your in-house team.

For physical design Sondrel covers the RTL2GDSII range, including DfT, and can take projects through to silicon. With over 100 physical design engineers across Sondrel’s 5 design centres we offer one of the world’s largest physical implementation capabilities, especially at leading edge technology nodes.

An engineer in a Sondrel team will reach tape out a number of times a year and have knowledge of most of the latest EDA tools within their expertise area. Sondrel is directly briefed by both EDA suppliers and the foundries who recognise us as a vital part of their design eco system.

Off shore Design Center Business Model

Sondrel has created a series of ISO27001 accredited multi-secure room (data and physical) design centers in Europe, Morocco and China. Each offers the best environment for our customers and engineers to deliver successful projects and specific consultancy tasks. Sondrel can supply an entire design team or add additional engineers to support or complete your existing team. Customers use our offshore sites where necessary design skills are not available to them locally, or are simply too expensive. Additional benefits include the handling of peaks and troughs in engineering load, the release of expensive office space at a customer site, and of course a reduction in IC design cost. Sondrel can supply tools from all the main EDA vendors as required and operate them in a secure cloud environment.

Delivery a successful project is all about project management, understanding and managing the inherent risks within the project, managing customer communication and expectation, and of course managing the design team and the engineering task. At the top of the Sondrel engineering pyramid is our Associate Director level. These engineers are picked from among our Senior Consultants as suited to managing projects and teams to successful outcomes. Sondrel trains and mentors these engineers in delivery and they are selected for their good customer communication skills as well as their delivery excellence.

IoT Consultancy Services

A Consultancy Service for Delivering your IoT Chip

The Internet of Things (IoT) encompasses products in multiple market segments which have the common ability to sense the physical world around them and to provide M2M connectivity directly or via the internet.

Sondrel’s expertise built up over 13 years, in digital and analog low power design, and relationships with supply chain partners across Europe and Asia allows our projects managers to offer consultancy at the early project stage whilst key decisions are being taken impacting costs down the line.

Sondrel can then follow through with spec to silicon execution successfully ensuring the delivery of your IoT custom ASIC.

Sondrel has partnered with ARM, with ARM® DesignStart™ Portal and Imec-ic, through its Design &IP Partner Program.

Sondrel is a founder member of the IoT Security Foundation

The path from design to silicon is long and complex involving many steps. Sondrel will act as your partner and guide along this journey.

Expert advice on each element of the design through to silicon process

Services can be provided at fixed price or time and materials. Single expert consultancy is also available. Engineers will be at Sondrel Offshore Design Centerss but an on-site at customer presence is also possible.

Service Examples:

Functional Verification

Formal Verification Techniques

DfT for Automotive

DFM aware Physical Design

ESD Design Technique

Power Management

Unlike other sectors the automotive sector does not typically work to the most advanced technology nodes (<20nm) and is only now starting to focus around 28nm, seeking optimum dielectric isolation (leakage current v speed trade off) at what is now a well-established, high yield and well proven node.

and an understanding of design to Automotive Safety Integrity levels (ISO26262 ASIL A-D)

The design must also be tested to a reliability prediction program, SN29500/TR62380.

The Sondrel engineering team has delivered multiple RTL2GDSII engagements in a wide range of process technologies, with specific experience on automotive design projects. We are constantly building on our technical knowledge, adopting the latest design techniques to deliver our clients’ target specifications, right first time.

‘Shift Left’ Verification Consultancy Services

Design Verification of modern digital ICs is challenging, often on the critical path for a project and consuming many costly resources. The consequences of getting this task wrong can have major implications on your business, such as delays in getting your product to market, costly re-spins or even product field failures. It is important to ensure the design has been verified as much as possible within the time and cost constraints of the project. This necessitates starting verification as early in the design cycle as possible, a “shift left” in the verification task, removing hardware and software bugs where they have the least impact. Sondrel’s verification team are skilled in the broad range of advanced design verification and debug methodologies for SoC and IPfunctional verificationwith SystemVerilog UVM, power integrity verification, formal verification and HW acceleration enabling your verification projects to “shift left”.

Sondrel provides highly flexible engagement models enabling our clients to choose the optimum way of working for their business. Services are delivered through on-site consultants or at our low cost off-shore design centers.

Advanced Power Management Consultancy Services

From the largest SoC to the smallest IoT devices, power is often a critical element of the PPA mix.

If the power of your chip is critical to its success then no effort should be spared and the latest techniques applied. Falling short is not an option.

The delivery of this consultancy will always match the needs of the customer. This can be on-site, off-site working at our ODCs (off-shore design centers), or a combination of both.

Sondrel provides cutting edge implementation solutions to help our clients minimize power consumption and optimize power on high performance chips. We save static and dynamic power throughout the backend design flow:

All of the Sondrel Low Power methodologies are included in our Helium 8P Implementation and Verification Flow which is compatible with a wide range of EDA tools (Synopsys, Mentor, Cadence, and Ansys). In addition, our Neon Project Management System allows you to monitor your power budget from the very beginning of the design flow until tape-out.

Helium supports different types of power intent description (e.g. UPF, CPF). A wide variety of checks are executed, from the Multi-Voltage rule checking, down to power measurement, IRdrop, supply or signal EM, IOs SSO analysis.